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via JoNova
August 19, 2025 at 09:22AM
Category: Daily News
51.228581 0.320241 No Current Met Office CIMO Assessment Installed 27/10/2016
Hadlow is a small town in west Kent that is host to an historic castle and a prestigious agricultural college. The college has in modern times grown into a major community facility including a primary school and garden centre on campus and even Charlton Athletic Football Club’s youth academy. The college runs courses up to and including graduate level in a range of agricultural areas including engineering. For full disclosure I have personally worked there in the past. The weather station there is very interesting indeed for a surprising reason.
The Met Office prominently defends its poor siting of weather stations on the internet by a dedicated webpage of excuses. https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/how-forecasts-are-made/observations/observation-site-classification An extract below reads like a list of reasons for failure – when authors resort to tems such as “holistic” one should be remarkably wary. Quite why “record verification” was slipped in there baffles me – a “strawman” perhaps.
“WMO Siting Classifications were designed with reference to a wide range of global environments and the higher classes can be difficult to achieve in the more-densely populated and higher latitude UK. For example, the criteria for a Class 1 rating for temperature suits wide open flat areas with little or no human influenced land use and high amounts of continuous sunshine reaching the screen all year around, however, these conditions are relatively rare in the UK. Mid and higher latitude sites will, additionally, receive more shading from low sun angles than some other stations globally, so shading will most commonly result in a higher CIMO classification – most Stevenson Screens in the UK are class 3 or 4 for temperature as a result but continue to produce valid high-quality data. WMO guidance does, in fact, not preclude use of Class 5 temperature sites – the WMO classification simply informs the data user of the geographical scale of a site’s representativity of the surrounding environment – the smaller the siting class, the higher the representativeness of the measurement for a wide area. Indeed, it should be noted that WMO Class 5 is not the same as a Met Office ‘Unsatisfactory’ inspection assessment, which ultimately determines the ongoing use of a site. We use the Met Office grading system to determine record verification because; it has historical relevance, covering a wide range of long-standing criteria at UK observation sites, the equipment, and the exposure in a holistic manner and has clear meaning to what is acceptable or not. It tells us how much confidence we have in the data and permits comparisons. ”
The reason I am making this point is that there used to be an official Met office weather station at Hadlow College from 1966 to 1994 (DCNN 5323 at 51.22328, 0.32998) until the college developed that particular part of the site. The Met office opted against relocation and closed down a reasonable quality and very well observed site that looked like this in 1990.
So what is in the headline image I opted to start this post with? Well that is unquestionably a CLASS 1 weather station at Hadlow College installed 27/10/2016 by the same government department (Department of Science Information and Technology – Minister Peter Kyle MP) that runs the Met Office….but it NOT a Met Office “official weather station” The site owners helpfully include detailed site coordinates, temperature data and good quality colour imagery of every one of their 51 sites around the country. Here is CLASS 1 standard Hadlow. N.B. No antiquated Victorian casings in sight, just modern high tech equipment of a much better standard in flat and clear open country that reports automatically.
So if the government sponsored UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology can manage to find this top quality site and record lots of information (handily including air temperature readings on a half hourly basis) how come is it that the Met Office makes excuses for not being able to? Here is the UKCEH map of sites and their site searchable index.
https://cosmos.ceh.ac.uk/about/network
As i noted at Morpeth: Cockle Park whilst the Met office was effectively downgrading a formerly good site, the UKCEH almost simultaneously opened a Class 1 standard site. If UKCEH can do this regularly why cannot the Met Office?
Cockle Park – Can’t get much better than this.
I am attempting to get access to UKCEH data for comparison purposes. In the meantime the Met Office needs to answer even more serious questions.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
August 19, 2025 at 09:09AM
By Paul Homewood
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2025/al05/al052025.discus.022.shtml
Hurricane Erin has gone into the books as a Cat 5 hurricane, but that is a long way from the full story.
According to the reports from the National Hurricane Center, Erin briefly got to “near 140kts” on Saturday afternoon – Cat 5s are 137 kts and over.
Shortly after, it rapidly weakened as an eyewall replacement cycle took place:
https://rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/storm.asp?storm_identifier=al052025
This apparent spike in wind speeds was not spotted by satellites, which peaked at around 130 kts:
It is now commonplace for hurricane hunter aircraft to spend hours flying inside hurricanes, even far from Florida as Erin was on Saturday. Consequently they are much more likely to spot a short lived spike in just one small area of the eyewall.
Planes are now much more robust with longer range and can stay in the air longer. The WP-3D Orion, for example, has a range of about 3,800 nautical miles and can fly up to 10-12 hours, sufficient for most hurricane missions. The Gulfstream IV-SP has an even longer range of 4200 nautical miles.
Even just a few years ago this would not have been possible. The Gulfstream, for instance, was only introduced in 1996.
Without this sort of virtually continuous observation, Erin’s peak wind speeds would almost certainly not have been recorded.
In 2012, leading US hurricane scientists, Chris Landsea and Andrew Hagen, looked into the consequences of improving observation methods:
Abstract
An investigation is conducted to determine how improvements in observing capabilities and technology may have affected scientists’ ability to detect and monitor Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin during the mid-twentieth century. Previous studies state that there has been an increase in the number of intense hurricanes and attribute this increase to anthropogenic global warming. Other studies claim that the apparent increased hurricane activity is an artifact of better observational capabilities and improved technology for detecting these intense hurricanes. The present study focuses on the 10 most recent Category 5 hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic, from Hurricane Andrew (1992) through Hurricane Felix (2007). These 10 hurricanes are placed into the context of the technology available in the period of 1944–53, the first decade of aircraft reconnaissance. A methodology is created to determine how many of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes likely would have been recorded as Category 5 if they had occurred during this period using only the observations that likely would have been available with existing technology and observational networks. Late-1940s and early-1950s best-track intensities are determined for the entire lifetime of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes. It is found that likely only 2 of these 10—both Category 5 landfalling hurricanes—would have been recorded as Category 5 hurricanes if they had occurred during the late-1940s period. The results suggest that intensity estimates for extreme tropical cyclones prior to the satellite era are unreliable for trend and variability analysis.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/25/13/jcli-d-11-00420.1.xml
In short, they reviewed ten recent Cat 5s, and concluded that only two would have been rated Cat 5 using the technology available in the 1940s. (The two that would have been categorised were both Cat 5 at landfall, so would have been measured by land-based instruments).
Their paper includes this chart, originally published by McAdie et al in 2009:
Note that the first hurricane hunter jets were only introduced in 1996. Previously NOAA relied on the Orion, which is a turbo jet.
On this occasion the peak winds of Erin were measured by an Air Force Reserve Lockheed WC-130J Hercules, which they have only been using since 1999, replacing the older WC-130H. Moreover, the plethora of instruments carried by hurricane hunters now have improved out of all recognition over the years – Doppler, for example, only began to be used in the mid 1990s. SFMR (Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer) was not fully deployed until 2008.
Although dropsondes have been in use for longer, they have only been able to provide accurate data since the introduction of GPS, again during the 1990s.
Hagen & Landsea note:
Observations of the peak intensity in strong hurricanes were much less common during the late 1940s/early 1950s when compared with recent years because the ability to measure the central pressure and peak winds in major hurricanes was very limited during the late 1940s/early 1950s. A Category 5 designation would be possible if a hurricane made landfall as a Category 5 at or very near a weather station, or if a ship passed through the center while at Category 5 intensity. Aircraft reconnaissance was generally only capable of recording Category 4 conditions at most because of the inability to penetrate intense hurricanes.
The period 1944–1953 was the first decade of routine military aircraft reconnaissance into Atlantic tropical cyclones. Hagen et al. (2012) explain that the surface and especially the flight-level winds during this decade lack sufficient accuracy and consistency to be given more than a light weight in the reanalysis of the HURDAT intensity. Instead, the reanalysis of intensity relies heavily on aircraft central pressure measurements, when available. Central pressure measurements are converted to maximum wind speeds utilizing the Brown et al. (2006) pressure–wind relationships. Aircraft penetrations (i.e., fly into the eye) were extremely uncommon for major hurricanes from 1944 to 1949 and for Category 4 and 5 hurricanes from 1950 to 1953 because the aircraft were not equipped for the extreme winds and turbulence often experienced in hurricanes of that strength. Instead, circumnavigations would generally be conducted. When penetrations were not performed, central pressures could not be obtained, and the intensity of the hurricane is highly uncertain.
Significantly they also point out that hurricane hunters could only operate during daylight hours in the 1940s and 50s:
Aircraft intensity information was only available during daylight hours during the late 1940s and early 1950s, since penetrations of that era required low-level flights where the pilots could physically see the sea surface.
Hurricane Camille
To put some bones on all of this, let’s take a look at how Hurricane Camille, the second strongest hurricane to hit the US, was tracked back in 1969.
According to the official reports, a hurricane hunter penetrated Camille at 0016 GMT on 17th August, when central pressure of 905mb was recorded. This was about 28 hours before it made landfall in Mississippi.
Yet it was a further 18 hours before the next aircraft penetrated, despite the storm’s proximity to the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. This was to be the last aerial survey, as ground radar provided the information needed for tracking purposes. During these two long gaps, nobody knows whether winds peaked at even higher speeds.
This is in stark contrast to current practice, when the goal seems to be to search out the highest wind speed they can find just for the sake of it.
https://www.weather.gov/mob/camille
There is one other observation in the Camille report worth noting:
So we find that Navy aircraft were not allowed into any storm stronger than a weak Cat 4 and that the Air Force radar was not up to the job!
So when the BBC try to convince you that there are more Cat 5 Atlantic hurricanes than in the past, they are being dishonest.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 19, 2025 at 08:29AM
Constant promotion of unnatural 60-second heat spikes has characterised the performance of the UK Met Office during an average British summer interrupted by a number of short-lived heatwaves. Helped by trusted and unquestioning messengers in mainstream media, the Net Zero-obsessed Met Office is able to state that daily temperatures will rise to levels that are only briefly touched in highly industrialised areas such as airports. August 12th was just the latest day when a national “extreme” was declared at Heathrow. During a warm May, Heathrow recorded eight of the daily maximum temperatures. Not only do these temperatures arise out of junk low-rated stations, but the 60-second recording is guaranteed to pick up any unnatural heat spike. The World Meteorological Organisation recommends averaging temperatures produced by electronic devices between 1–10 minutes, depending on the need to remove or minimise transient unnatural temperature effects, often referred to as “noise”.
The Met Office is clearly a big fan of noise. It is undoubtedly a significant driver of its Net Zero political messaging and is behind numerous claims that more hot days are being recorded than ever before. Dr Eric Huxter has done some valuable work on temperature spikes, showing for instance how there can be huge differences in one-minute recordings when compared to readings made at the before and after hour mark. He noted that a highly promoted national May Day record of 29.3°C declared at 2.59pm in Kew Gardens was 2.6°C higher than the figure at 2pm and 0.76°C higher than the 3pm recording.
Obvious noise, obvious junk. Huxter comments: “Given the confirmation that spikey temperatures give to the Climate Change narrative, there seems little hope of a scientific evaluation of what the ‘true’ meteorological signal actually is.” Little and none sums it up, and little just left town. The conspiracy-minded Met Office recently stated that the efforts of a small number of people to “undermine the integrity of Met Office observations” was no less than “an attempt to undermine decades of robust science around the world’s changing climate”.
Another one of the small band of people attempting to undermine decades of robust science by pointing to crap Met Office temperature recordings is Ray Sanders. In the course of examining all 380-plus Met Office UK temperature sites, he recently investigated RAF Kenley which happens to lie midway between Heathrow and Gatwick. It is near Caterham and Croydon but it is in stand-by use these days and mainly used by gliders. Sanders notes that although it is CIMO Class 4 and subject to possible temperature errors, it would be a Class 2 if it was just moved a few yards away from a largely unused taxiway. Not a perfect site, notes Sanders, but open enough, as the picture below shows, to avoid artificial sheltering.
Needless to say, nobody can recall Kenley troubling the scorers over at the “extreme” temperature competition. Unbelievably, or risibly as Sanders observes, both Charlwood (Gatwick) and Heathrow are given a better Class 3 rating, and this prompted him to compare the highest temperatures recorded at the last three national record-breaking days.
Such inconsistencies need explaining, although of course there is fat chance of that from the Met Office. Recent Freedom of Information requests from Sanders have been dismissed as “vexatious” and not in the public interest. To be explained or not, Sanders asks if rural Caterham would be recording up to 4.2°C lower than rural Harmondsworth or 2.8°C lower than rural Crawley. “Which is most likely to be nearer the ‘real’ temperature – an open largely grassy area or a concrete jungle inhabited by tens of thousands of cars and hundreds of jet airliners?” And it might be added, why should we pay credence to claims of a climate milestone as was the case on July 19th 2022 when the measurement is half way up the backside of said jet airlines?
“Deploying ultra-modern instrumentation in almost ancient casings within areas subject to numerous distorting factors is the absurd unreality that the Met Office is now operating simply to produce wildly inaccurate representations of local conditions. This whole farrago needs to be completely dismantled and reconstructed by reputable meteorologists,” he concludes.
There is growing scientific evidence that urban heat is having a massive effect on temperatures declared around the world. Two Turkish meteorologists have recently published findings gained from studying data in 10 countries showing that airports and industrial centres are on average 2.5°C to 2.8°C warmer than neighbouring rural areas. Warming trends in recent decades are generally confined to the urban areas, it was noted.
Net Zero madness has left the Met Office between a rock and a hard place. An alternative to disbanding its nationwide network is to accept that the current higgledy-piggledy operation is unsuitable to be weaponised to promote the Net Zero fantasy. It is what it is; that is a rough-and-ready guide to local temperature conditions in very small specific locations. At airports such as Heathrow, it is a useful micro aid for hundreds of planes taking off and landing. It is not a cherished guide to climate Armageddon.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
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August 19, 2025 at 08:08AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
